


This Post-Postmodern Age Is All Business

by summerstorm



Category: Crazy Stupid Love (2011)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Misses Clause Challenge, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:18:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannah's heard all the horror stories about first-year associates cramming billable hours to the detriment of their lives, but she didn't think it would happen to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Post-Postmodern Age Is All Business

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shoshanna Gold (shoshannagold)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoshannagold/gifts).



> Title from a poem by Rita Dove. Thank you so much to abvj and kissoffools for their wonderful beta work.
> 
> Shosh, I'm not sure this is what you had in mind when you asked for established relationship fic, but I really enjoyed writing it, and I hope you like it at least a little bit. Happy holidays!

Hannah's heard all the horror stories about first-year associates cramming billable hours to the detriment of their lives, but she didn't think it would happen to her.

Okay, so she's not invincible, obviously, and her days are no longer than anyone else's. But she made it through law school unscathed. Mostly unscathed. The deepest cut was probably the thing that happened after she was finished, with her thinking her boyfriend was going to propose and him having something pretty different in mind. It's not like that job offer, or the one she actually took, was far enough down the line to allow her body to forget the routine she'd painstakingly put together since she moved out for college. Two parts of class to three parts of studying to one part of sleeping, replace class and studying with work and that's not that big a change.

If anything, it should be easier: most days she only sets foot in two buildings, her new law firm and her apartment block. Court is a bit of a pipe dream at this point; she's pretty sure she saw the inside of a court room more often when she was shadowing a third-year associate as part of her internship last summer. Now she's starting to wonder if it even exists, or if it's just some sort of sustained hallucination due to all the caffeine she's ingested on the reg for the past five weeks.

But it's not that easy, and it sucks her time like something that sucks a ton of time. It's not even deliberate: she'll pick up a file one minute and the next time she looks at the clock, it will be four hours later. Late lunches become a staple until a partner's assistant takes pity on her and starts asking if she wants anything on her way to the deli down the street. Half the time it gets cold and clammy before she gets a bite in, too scared to get crumbs or, god forbid, mayo on someone else's documents. And she can't seem to take breaks, but that part she's used to, this thing in her brain where whenever something's building and building she's terrified if she gets distracted she won't be able to make the mental process click again.

The whole thing is—it pays well, and Hannah always thought she'd do better in corporate law precisely for that reason. As romantic as it is to dream of putting bad guys in jail, she has friends in the district attorney's office and, yeah, no, that's not for her. At least there's no moral dilemma included in her losing battles. Not that she's getting much of a chance to lose. Or win, for that matter. Turns out being a junior associate involves a lot of paperwork, and people not trusting you to talk to outsiders, and apparently a lot of being your own assistant.

Sometimes, when someone puts her on hold, she wonders if things would be easier or less frustrating if she'd taken the job Richard offered her instead of going for this one, and it warms her heart to remember two things: a) she knows the person who took it, and they're in direct competition with somebody else; at least Hannah's job is her job; b) she doesn't owe anyone. Well, she owes Jacob a little, for buying the suit she interviewed in and convincing her, for just long enough, that if she got rejected she wasn't going to die. Now that's the kind of logic she wouldn't be able to replicate.

She has a "casual" evaluation with one of the partners after she's put together a case for an appeal. Hannah does not feel casual about it. Hannah pockets a box of ibuprofen before leaving her desk just in case her head stops humming painfully and actually blows up. Nerve headaches, that's new, unless it isn't and she's just reeling from sleeping a grand total of three hours last night. It's the partner who started the firm: a tall, curly-haired woman by the name of Zoe Tidwell. She's pretty imposing, and not just because of the heels. But she seems to like Hannah, and Hannah eventually stops clasping the armrests of her chair so hard her knuckles are white, and she comes out of it second chair to Zoe's first on a class action suit against a pharmaceutical.

It's awesome, having that responsibility, plus she gets to delegate a lot of the paperwork onto Zoe's assistant. It's still a pretty grueling job, though, and incredibly time-consuming; it's been on the backburner for a year for lack of evidence, and now Hannah practically has to go door to door reviewing testimonies, speaking to each of the plaintiffs and making sure they're all on the same page they were last year, and the same page as each other. She spends an entire morning figuring out a schedule; she cancels lunch with Liz and has to hold back from calling Zoe her goddess when she brings by a cup of strong coffee and asks how things are going.

"Progressing apace," Hannah says facetiously, her chin high, and she silently thanks the hot cup filled with even hotter liquid in her hand for saving her from doing some kind of military salute. It crosses her mind. She needs to cut back on the caffeine. She's not going to cut back on the caffeine.

At four in the afternoon she calms her growling stomach with a couple of candy bars she stashed in her bottom drawer and remembers she was supposed to meet Jacob for dinner. She sketches out a quick text, `held up at work, raincheck?` and feels a lot less guilty when he replies with a sad face. As in an exaggerated picture of his exaggeratedly sad face. He probably had back-up plans anyway. Jacob's good at this contingency thing, unlike Hannah, who only comes up with one possible scenario and loses it when it falls through. At least that's what Liz says. Hannah's pretty sure it's not that bad. So she can get a little tunnel-visiony, fine. But that doesn't mean she can't adapt.

The house visits start two days later, and by the end of Thursday she's in dire need of a long bath and a new pair of smart-looking shoes. She spends Friday morning in her office, going over her notes, comparing and contrasting. She manages to sneak out for lunch with Liz, because she owes her half a dozen lunches at this point, but it's quick and not very relaxing. When she gets home she collapses on the couch and doesn't wake up until three in the morning, her clothes wrinkled beyond repair. She yanks them off on the way to her bedroom and proceeds to collapse on her bed, barely scraping together enough willpower to drag a blanket over herself.

She sleeps through her alarm, but it's fine, it's _fine_ , she reminds herself once she's rushed through her morning routine and jumped in the shower. It's fine because she's piled up enough hours this week already and there aren't any urgent matters she has to attend. Just show up at the office, go through a few more accounts, check out the stack of files Zoe's investigator left on her desk last night just when Hannah was getting in the elevator to leave. Talk to Zoe, too; she should definitely talk to Zoe about the one holdout from Wednesday morning.

She walks out of Zoe's office to find Jacob sitting on the little armchair in Hannah's, holding up a bag of what smells like Chinese food. "Thought you could use a break," he says cheerily, and she instinctively looks around, closing the door behind her.

"What are you doing here?" she blurts out, her voice high.

He frowns at her, and slowly, enunciating, repeats, "I _thought_ you could use a break." The nervous laugh that comes out of her mouth isn't even human. Not even close. Her chair wobbles when she drops down on it, drags it towards Jacob. "Is this a bad time?" Jacob says calmly, looking just a little bit amused. Hannah stares at him, and lets out a long breath.

"It's fine," she says, forcing the beginning of a smile before the rest comes naturally—minimally, but naturally. "Thank you."

"You sound stressed out," Jacob says, opening one of the bags and pulling out a couple of containers and actual-cutlery forks he must have thrown in there from his kitchen. Hannah grabs the one he holds out for her, her stomach beginning to rebel at the scent of food, and digs in. "So is this what it's going to be like from now on? I bring you food and you don't even look at me?"

Hannah looks up with a hand over her mouth, and kicks Jacob in the shin when she realizes he's smiling. "Well, since you skipped the waiting tables stage of job hunting. Call it an experience."

"I will," Jacob says solemnly, nodding. Hannah wolfs down the rest of her container, and he hands her another one.

"Did you eat already?"

Jacob shrugs. "You look like you need this more than I do."

"Gee, thanks," she says, but whatever, she's not going to push it if he's bringing her food. He has a lot of free time; he can get his own. Besides, there is soy in this salad. Perfect way to get the gross reminder of chicken out of her mouth until she gets a chance to brush her teeth. She half listens to Jacob as he talks about... something, actually she zones out halfway through, trying to figure out why they have two holdouts now and how to make that number zero. When she's done eating, she throws the trash in the trash can and Jacob's fork in the bag he opens for her. "I'm really busy, though," she says, apologetically forcing a smile.

"That's okay," Jacob says quickly, and moves to get up.

"No, I mean," Hannah starts, but actually she meant what she said, said what she means, there's not a lot of clarifying to be done here. "I'll see you tonight?"

"Sure," Jacob says, and leans down to kiss her at the same time she leans up, the chair squeaking underneath her. She catches his cheek at first, and then he holds her face with a warm hand and gives her a solid, brief kiss on the lips. "You know, I was waiting out there for a while. The receptionist loves me. As does this one guy from the paralegal team, I forget his name. I think he wants to be me. Or do me. I'm not sure. I could be your food delivery guy and stand outside like a limo driver while you finish."

Hannah shakes her head, laughing. " _Go_ ," she says, and lazily smacks his ass on the way out.

Four hours later she's standing in a hospital waiting room with a client, waiting for her husband to get out of emergency surgery. There's a paralegal with them, and Hannah's tired, and hates hospitals with a passion, and she doesn't know why she can't bring herself to leave the paralegal there and just go home. It's not even her client. She excuses herself after a while to 'get coffee,' or at least hide in the cafeteria, but it's hot and crowded, so she steps out to the parking lot instead, breathes in some cleanish air for a while.

She's almost back to the waiting room when she remembers Jacob was supposed to pick her up from her apartment ten minutes ago, and she scrambles to find her phone in her bag. "I'm sorry," she opens with, as sincere as she can make it sound.

"Hannah," Jacob says, "where are you?"

"I'm in the hospital—don't worry, it's not me, it's a client," she says. "I think I'm gonna be a while."

After a few seconds of silence, Jacob says, "That's okay. I was running late anyway," and Hannah laughs, relieved, and promises she'll make it up to him. It's another two hours before she gets home, and she's already had a quick dinner and a slower shower before she notices there's a piece of paper stuck under one of the shoes she kicked off when she came in. She picks it off with the tip of two fingers and waves it as far away from her face as she can. It's Jacob's handwriting, which she recognizes because he leaves a lot of notes, and it says, _Hope you're home safe and not too rattled by hospital stay. Remember hospitals are the most sanitary place you could ever get stuck in with a bunch of sick people. Call me when you get a chance._

She does mean to call. She does, just after she's had a cup of decaf, but then she puts on a movie and falls asleep on the couch, and it totally slips her mind the morning after. She ends up calling him late on Sunday, when it's way too late for him to ask her to come over. She just—she doesn't need time alone, necessarily, but she needs time to rest, and Jacob is really hard to ignore. She starts talking to him and then it's four hours later and she's still awake, feeling blissful and also exhausted.

On the phone, they have a brief conversation, punctuated by yawns on her end and unusually awkward-sounding laughs on his, and he's the one who ends it, reminding her of what time it is and how many hours of sleep she'll get if she goes to bed right now. "Oh, god, that would be awesome," she blurts out.

"Yeah, yes, it really would," he humors her, and she thanks him, downs what's left in her wine glass, and heads for her nightwear drawer.

*

He drops by her office mid-morning on Tuesday. It's the first time they've seen each other since Saturday, but this is her job, and she's new and nobody thinks that highly of her as it is, like there's some stigma that comes with being hired by the youngest, newest partner in the firm, Callahan; she should thank him for that.

The point is, she feels really awkward having her boyfriend around. Nobody else's boyfriend visits them. She can't say she's paying that much attention, but she's pretty sure that is a fact. And Jacob must feel her uneasiness, because he doesn't stay long this time, doesn't even bring real cutlery he has to take back with him. She's fine with that, she's awesome at the chopsticks thing, but it feels weird when he's gone and she didn't even kiss him goodbye because her mouth was full of noodles.

It's like being back in high school, trying to figure out the societal rules of the wild lawyer world.

Callahan ropes her into helping out with a murder case when her workload starts to lighten up; he says they need all the eyes and ears they can get, but it feels more like shadowing than helping, and she was hoping she was done with shadowing higher-ups by this point. She makes it home at midnight, after a long, unsatisfying dinner with Callahan, his second chair on the case, two paralegals, someone from the firm's legal counsel and an investigator. By the end of it, Hannah's pretty sure they're polling her demographic, trying to figure out how three young, white female jurors from liberal families will react to Callahan's defense.

She feels weirdly objectified, but she's too exhausted to care. She barely has time to change out of her clothes and go to the bathroom before it becomes a battle of willpower versus body to keep her eyes open.

The next day is easier; the class action suit is getting closer to court, and Zoe is delegating less and less, becoming more involved. Hannah hangs around, but she's not in charge of anything, just completing tasks here and there that Zoe gives her as they go. She makes it home early that afternoon, deciding she's allowed a break from accumulating hours, and calls Jacob, tells him she's coming by if that's okay with him.

"You couldn't surprise me?" he says flatly when he opens the door, and she gives him a quick, narrow-eyed glare before he leans in for a kiss. She's still tired, but not irritably tired, and after a few minutes she's hit by just how much she missed spending time with him. They order in Thai for dinner, sit on the carpet with some procedural or another on TV, the volume turned down low. He tells her about her dad—it's so weird that her boyfriend keeps tabs on her dad better than she does—and what he's been working on lately, and watching and reading and god, she misses reading things with actual prose in them. And movies. She misses discovering movies; every movie she's watched in the past month was something she'd seen before, because she knew she'd fall asleep halfway through anyway, and she hates watching movies in bits and pieces. Ruins the experience.

"Now that's not true," Jacob says, and she says, "Yes, it is," and they go back and forth until her smile feels like it's permanently plastered on her face.

When the food comes, she starts on a run-through of the class action before he laughs and says, "You realize you're supposed to be relaxing."

"I'm relaxed," she lies, forcing a smile through her fork, and he laughs again. She swallows and adds, "No, seriously, I'm relaxing. This is part of my wind-down."

"Sure," he says, and reaches to pick a piece of spinach off her mouth. "You should eat slower."

"I'm sorry I haven't had a decent meal in a week," she says, a little cold, not meaning anything by her tone, just that she's hungry, and tired of not having the time or place to process nutrients. That's all.

There's a stretch of uncomfortable silence while her stomach settles, punctuated by a few shots on TV. She directs her attention towards it, because it seems like a better idea than staring at Jacob while he says nothing, and it helps. At first. Five minutes later, her stomach's unsettled again—not stress, this time, just sheer raw nerves. It's probably just her. She's been on edge lately; it stands to reason she'd get antsy easily, even if it's over a stupid stretch of silence with her hot boyfriend who has somehow not dumped her yet, even though they've barely seen each other lately, and they... when was the last time they had sex? Last month? How is that even possible?

She sneaks a glance at him, but he's staring intently at the TV, holding a plate of food but not really eating, and now she's anxious. Not because it's been so long since they had sex, though it is a factor, but because she's canceled eight or nine of the last, like, twelve dates they've set up, and god knows how many times Jacob was actually ready to pick her up before she called to tell him she wasn't where she was supposed to be. She's been working and that's—that's not something she's going to stop doing, but Jacob's used to a lot of attention and never being alone and this is the first real relationship he's ever had. There's no way this isn't bothering him. There's no way it's worth it for him, if she's never around.

She only realizes she's staring at him when he meets her eyes. She blinks nervously, and all of a sudden he says, "I was going to leave you takeout that night you stood me up, but I didn't think you'd eat something you found on your welcome mat," and she immediately feels like she can breathe again. His head is tilted, there's a smile playing in his eyes, and it makes her feel comfortable enough to lean back against the couch.

"Yeah, good call, dude," she says, and takes a drink of water, lets it cool up her throat.

"You know—"

"Obviously I don't or you wouldn't have to tell me," she interrupts. He looks at her for a second and then laughs, goes on as if she hadn't said anything.

"You know that this wouldn't happen if you didn't live alone."

She snorts, and when that doesn't seem like enough of an answer, she says, "I am way too busy right now to look for a roommate. Not to mention way too busy, and too old to believe I can live with a stranger, and also, oh, yeah: way too busy."

"Yeah, I got that," he says, the corner of his mouth quirking up. "You don't have to look for one."

She frowns at him, because that doesn't make any sense—where does he think she's going to pick up a roommate otherwise, the street? But he doesn't elaborate, just widens his eyes very slightly, urging her to get what he's saying.

When she does, she puts down her glass and says, "Are you _crazy_?"

"I am most certainly not," Jacob says, very proudly. "I've been over this with therapists. I am of sound mind and—well, you be the judge of my body. But I'm serious."

"No way," Hannah says. "Our six-month anniversary was like, last _week_ —" _and_ she missed that dinner. The world: 1, Hannah: minus a million.

He doesn't mention that. "I am. I really am. It would solve all our problems."

"Of course it would," Hannah says incredulously, and Jacob laughs.

"You're so jaded; I thought I was the jaded one. No, look, there are practical reasons you should move in with me. Number one, your apartment is shit. I'm not sure it's even that clean. Every time I step in there I feel germs crawling up my pant legs."

"Insulting my apartment will get you so far. So far," Hannah says calmly, nodding.

"But see, you wouldn't even need to bother to clean. Because I wouldn't trust you with it, but also because you're busy and I understand that. You're busier than I am, and I'm officially something or other in my father's company."

"A figurehead," Hannah supplies.

Jacob goes with it, smiling at her for a moment. "That. And that whole thing, this thing you do where you tell me you can't come by because your work clothes are in your apartment, that is crap, you could have some here even if you don't move in, but if you did move in? It would be a nonissue." Hannah nods for him to go on, and he waves his hands vaguely until he comes up with something new: "I'd cook for you. I like to cook for people, people love my food." Hannah does love his food. "You wouldn't have to worry about preparation and shit when you get home from work, just sit down and eat, like a stereotypical husband from the 50s."

"So hot," Hannah deadpans.

"So true," Jacob reiterates. Hannah's leaning against his shoulder now, looking at the TV without actually registering anything of what's going on, and she feels more relaxed than she has in a while. She'd almost forgotten how easy he makes it to be around him, and the part where he climbs over her in the couch and kisses her is nice, too.

"You realize," she says after a while, "you realize my apartment isn't dirty just because it's not some shiny modern wonder like this place, right?"

"I almost vacuumed a pair of tights from the back of my closet this morning," he says quietly. "And I mean the back of it. As in, behind it. Outside the closet."

"Okay. Just checking," she finishes, and runs her fingers up the back of his shirt.

*

The sun's just rising when she wakes up, and she stretches lazily in bed, eyes closed, for a while before she opens them again. Jacob's not in bed, and soon enough he rushes through the bedroom, already dressed, heading straight for one of the dresser drawers. She rubs her eyes and blearily asks, "What are you _doing_ ," before it dawns on her that, fuck, she's late. She jumps up and finds her clothes on a chair by the closet, no doubt Jacob's doing, and puts them on as quickly as she can. Her attempt to straighten them out doesn't do a lot of good; when Jacob takes a look at her, he finds her a clean shirt.

"That'll make your outfit look less like yesterday's," he says.

"Oh, thanks, I didn't know you cared about that," she says, and he scrunches up his face like she's making no sense at all, which—okay, that's true, what she just said doesn't even resemble Jacob. "Shut up, I'm busy." She heads for the bathroom and back out to the front door, with a detour by the living room to grab her bag off the coffee table. The keys to her desk drawers at work are missing, and her blackberry, and yeah, this is great. "I'm going to have to stop by my apartment, fuck," she says, mostly to herself.

"Hold up," Jacob calls out, coming out of the bedroom and tossing a shirt from the floor to a chair on his way, "hold up, I found it," and presents her with a key.

She falls silent.

"It's a spare key," he says slowly, like Hannah can't see that for herself. She raises an eyebrow—it's way too soon for this, they barely even discussed it last night. He frowns for a moment, and then he takes her hand, puts the key on her palm, presses her fist closed around it. When he looks up, his face is serious, and disappointed and crestfallen, and it feels like a punch in the gut—or like she punched him in the gut, which was nowhere near her intention. "You need to eat," he says. "Make a stop at your apartment after work, grab some clothes, drive here. I'll pick you up if you want. Nothing permanent about it."

"I can drive," she says, stunned into a sort of quietness, and he nods once. His eyes look emotionless—there isn't even the usual smugness there. He's just cold, and it feels cold when he presses a dry, close-lipped kiss to her cheek.

Her first instinct is to apologize, which she doesn't remember ever happening with Jacob. But she's right to be surprised. They didn't discuss this, he couldn't have expected her to pack up and leave her apartment the morning after he swung that idea by her. Besides, she's late for work.

She has to go.

*

The class action suit hits court that morning, which is fantastic timing; Hannah only remembers when she checks her schedule at home, already late for the office. She's not going to be doing a lot; the defense is already locked in, and it seems to be one of those universally acknowledged truths that Zoe never delegates on court proceedings. But she hasn't been in court since she started working at Tidwell/Smith & Callahan, so this is a big deal. Now that her office has been cleaned out and she's working on a court case, she doesn't want to go back to being the weird girl in the storage unit.

Given Zoe's not going to be at the office, Hannah skips it altogether in favor of taking a good shower, washing her hair, finding clothes that look sharp and smart and are actually clean. She does make it in time to court, more than, and Zoe doesn't look particularly surprised or disappointed or anything when she arrives, just hands her a stack of papers and reminds her of various things that could come up during trial—two pairs of eyes are better than one and all that. She nods a lot and doesn't shuffle her feet, and the first hearing goes pretty well, at least until the pharmaceutical's attorney announces his witness is going to be late and they need a one-hour recess.

"That's _my_ favorite part," Zoe says, her voice cold and the kind of snobbish Hannah would mock if it weren't so impressively cool. She may or may not be in the midst of developing an admiration crush on her boss. She'll never tell. "Take a break, half an hour," Zoe says next, and that throws Hannah for a loop, because what is she supposed to do here for half an hour?

She could ask one of their paralegals, but she doesn't really want to, so she steps out to get some air, finds a nicely lit coffee shop around the corner from a Starbucks. Hannah has nothing against Starbucks, but sometimes she just doesn't want to see her name on her drink. She has her files with her, and she goes over them while she sips her first coffee, but it's—there's nothing here she hasn't seen a thousand times, so by the second speed read-through she's bored and staring at her phone screen, skimming through old texts and tempted to shoot some angry birds. Which is a bad idea, because it makes her jittery and addicted. Except it's either that or go over the Jacob situation in her head, and that's not without its unsettling qualities.

The thing is, you don't just ask someone to move in with you. Or, okay, you do, Hannah doesn't know how else you'd do that, it's not like you can put a spare key in a glass of champagne—Hannah doesn't want any spare keys in a glass of champagne, at least, even though Jacob would probably sterilize it first, because Jacob's... Jacob. Kind of a neat freak, which is one of the problems she's not thinking of. Hannah's messy. Hannah leaves her dirty clothes all over and sometimes the dishes in the sink stay there for four days before she runs out of clean stuff to use, and most mornings she doesn't make her bed, and there are stains on her microwave from the time a cup of coffee overflowed there and she only got around to cleaning it two weeks later. She doesn't vacuum. She barely remembers to sweep the floors or mop unless she spills something. The only thing she's consistent about is dusting, and that's not exactly something you could say she's thorough about. Frankly, reaching for the top shelves feels like too much work.

And she's not going to stop being that way just because she lives with someone. She's had roommates before. She's even had roommates she wanted to impress. She knows how this works. She'll move in, and he'll realize he can't stand her as a roommate, and they'll break up. And this, this is exactly the sort of thing she was hoping to avoid that first time she kissed him, at the bar. She went to him because he _wasn't_ that type of guy. She didn't see him again because of that—though, okay, after a night of laughing and talking and _not_ having sex, she was pretty curious about what he'd be like in bed—but he was supposed to be the one who freaked out before she did. Not ask her to move in with him. She gets his point, and she likes his place, she likes his place a _lot_ , but there's no guarantee it's going to work out.

There's no guarantee they are going to work out. What if she gives up her shitty apartment and they break up and she has nowhere to go? Her shitty apartment is home. It's where she can go at the end of the day and just lie down and have no one bother her. What if she moves in and it turns out they can't stand each other as roommates? She had enough "please clean up after yourself" from her mom.

Coffee's clearly not the right choice, because she's still thinking about the moving in thing through the defendant's witness's testimony. She gets a couple of objections in and she's pretty sure the jury's not convinced by the witness: there are a lot of narrowed eyes, and jurors #4 and #7 shake their heads a couple of times. She knows they have someone in the stands keeping track of that stuff, but she takes notes anyway, figures it can't hurt any. They stop for the day when the attorney's investigator shows up with new evidence—whether it will help them or the pharmaceutical is yet to be seen—and Zoe gives Hannah another hour-long break while she talks to the judge before they head back to the offices.

"Oh, okay," Hannah says awkwardly, because—well, she should be going to those things, but maybe Zoe's giving it time. Or maybe the judge likes to keep things private; Hannah got a quick rundown of active judges when she joined the firm, but she'd be lying if she said she remembered every quirk she was told they had. "I had lunch plans anyway," she mumbles, a complete lie, but whatever. She'll make lunch plans. Or what passes for lunch plans when her friends are busy: have lunch on her own and stay on the phone with Liz the whole time.

"Hold up," Liz says after Hannah goes on an admittedly overly long rant about being shut out of her own case, and how that can't possibly be smart.

"What?" Hannah says, taking a bite of her sandwich.

"Hold up, hold up, something's pinging my radar—"

Hannah rolls her eyes. "Liz, come on," she says around a mouthful, hand over her nose.

"No, you come on. You sound a little manic. What's going on?"

"I always sound a little manic," Hannah says, and takes a drink of water. Liz stays silent, which is a tried and true way to make Hannah spill. Hannah hates it, and fights it, but eventually she breaks down and tells Liz a careful, condensed version of what's going on with Jacob. It's just, she'd explain it in depth, but she knows what Liz is going to say; she's going to say that Hannah's being a coward and Jacob's proven himself to be someone who will be there for her. But that's not really the problem.

Maybe the calm, logical tone Hannah affects works, because instead, Liz says, "What about you? Are you in it?"

Hannah snorts, and chokes on her food, and has to wash it down with water. By the time she's done, she's still shocked and outraged by the question. "Am I _in it_?" she says, laughing, because _what the fuck_.

"Yes," Liz says sharply, unimpressed by Hannah's tone, but not without warmth, "do you see this lasting? Do you think you're still going to want to be with him in six months? In a year?"

"I really don't know how I'm going to feel in a year, Liz," Hannah says, and takes a deep breath, lets it out. Okay. Whatever she does, it's—it's her decision. This is not the end of the world. This is not a nightmare she should be terrified of. Just a difficult decision.

"And that's why you shouldn't have gotten in a relationship, but that's not the point." Liz sounds like she's shaking her head. Hannah deserves that. Kind of. Maybe. "The guy's in love with you. If he thinks you're gonna get married and have babies and you know he thinks you're gonna get married and have babies, and you don't want that—" Hannah's eyes widen as she goes, and her breath hitches for a second; it must be audible, because Liz quickly amends: "No, okay, that was a metaphor. _If you don't want to stay with him long term_ , is that better?"

Hannah nods, still feeling shaken, even though Liz can't see her. Liz is free to take the silence as a yes.

"If you don't want that and you keep him around anyway, you'll be doing what Richard did to you. But grosser. Actually, I'm not sure if it would be worse, at least you picked up on the clues—"

"It wasn't so much a clue as a candlestick right in the face," Hannah points out.

"Okay. So you'd be worse than Richard."

Hannah takes a moment to contemplate that. It ends when her blackberry beeps; she winces and fishes it out of her bag. "Gotta get back, see you Tuesday," she tells Liz.

"If someone puts you on the bench, sure," Liz says, and then, just before Hannah hangs up, "also, you didn't answer my question!"—but it's not like Hannah has an answer ready right now.

*

Hannah doesn't intend to avoid Jacob, it's not something she plans, but okay, in retrospect, she may have meant to do that. She's just not up for driving when she gets home from work, let alone having a serious discussion. There's leftover pizza in the fridge that needs to be eaten before it goes bad, too. That's definitely a priority. As is the transcript from the first hearing on the case last year, which she took home with her to read in bed. She can't think of anything better to put her to sleep.

She's in and out of court all day Friday; she makes a point of calling Jacob in the morning to apologize for not showing up, but he says, "You never actually said you would," and the conversation gets stuck there. He's—she knows she has a habit of pointing out loopholes for fun, and it wouldn't be the first time he's made fun of it, but there's something else there, something she doesn't want to acknowledge, whether it's prickliness to mask up anger or just plain old hurt. She's not ready to talk to him, so she jumps at the chance to go on a few more house visits on Saturday, straighten things out with a couple of plaintiffs who are threatening to back off the case. She has no excuse for not calling Jacob that night; she gets home early, there's nothing on TV, and she scrapes together a meal that isn't half as good as the last time Jacob made it.

Because poor choices never cease, she sleeps in on Sunday, which she knows will make it harder to get up on Monday. Something or other compels her to clean her apartment; she even pulls out the vacuum cleaner she stole from her last roommate—no, didn't steal, just took when said roommate left it behind. It's perfectly morally correct to keep something if it's left behind, especially if you're like ninety percent certain the person in question left it behind because she'd upgraded her cleaning equipment and thought of her old stuff as basically trash.

She makes her bed, tidies up her room, tosses all her half-dirty clothes in the laundry basket. She cleans the bathroom and the kitchen sink and throws out all the vaguely odd-smelling things in the fridge, which she'd normally eat, but whatever, she has a decent job now, it's about time she stops taking risks like that. Jacob would be proud of her for avoiding food poisoning like a real human adult. She heads down to the laundry room after lunch with a container of frozen yogurt and an LA Times someone left on top of the mailboxes in the lobby. She doesn't go as far as to separate her colors, but she knows from experience none of her clothes bleed, so she just sits on an out of service dryer and doesn't think about anything much except that this would be a lot less boring if Jacob was with her. At least they could make out. It's not like there's anyone else around; they're probably having dinner right now. By the time she heads back to her apartment, she's tired again, but good tired, almost relaxed. Still not ready to discuss moving in with her boyfriend, but definitely in the mood to see him.

So she calls him, and he doesn't make a big deal out of the fact that they haven't seen each other since he gave her a spare key, just says he'll be there in a couple hours, if she can wait that long. "Awesome," she says, and softer, "miss you." He doesn't answer that, but he stays on the phone for a few seconds before hanging up, and wishful thinking says it at least made him smile.

He arrives with his insulated messenger bag and a mock shocked look and says, "You cleaned," as she closes the door behind him. She shrugs, because a part of her feels like he's being overly casual, like there's a follow-up question there, something like: 'Does this mean you're staying here? Is moving in with me such a scary prospect that you'd actually pick up a vacuum and make your shitty apartment look halfway desirable?'

Hannah hates her imagination.

"Why do you insist on suffering through this place?" he says, still casual, laying out things on her kitchen island. She's not even going to ask. Far be it from her to complain about someone choosing to cook for her, even if it's a pretty transparent reminder of The Thing They Are Not Discussing.

"Some of us aren't accustomed to your particular lifestyle," Hannah retorts, tossing a packet of butter in the fridge when he hands it to her.

Jacob looks up, narrows his eyes. "And what lifestyle would that be, Miss Weaver?"

"Massive houses, high-tech appliances, a whole maintenance staff," Hannah lists off. He goes with it, denying and shaking off her claims until the affected casualness of the conversation feels real. It gets boring to just watch him do things after a while, and she's not crazy about helping people in the kitchen, never has been, so she heads off and finds some music. He pretty much instantly insults her taste in music, which she takes great offense to, and they go back and forth on that until she gets bored and says, curtly, "I really don't care."

He allows that to sink in for a few seconds, peppering whatever he's making with thyme. Then, he says thoughtfully, "I could get used to it," and all Hannah can do is press her lips together and breathe. Breathe.

He's obviously—he must really want her to move in, because this much compromising isn't normal. Even if it's just offers he could go back on. Hannah reminds herself he's not acting like he normally would, he's trying to woo her into acquiescing, but the thing is, this is pretty much how he normally acts. Certain tidbits of conversation may be more charged than usual, mean more than usual, but they've been together for a little over six months and there's nothing about his behavior that she hasn't seen before.

They get through dinner in one piece—the wine helps—and lounge around after, with a movie on TV both of them stop paying attention to after a while. He gets up before it's over and turns the music on again, the track following the last one the stereo played before Hannah turned the TV on, and he takes her hand and drags her up with him. She laughs and goes, and they fall into this weird, almost still dance that feels lazier than all the graceless swaying that went on at her prom. It's nice, though, ad his hands are warm when he picks her up, holding onto her thighs as she leans in to kiss him.

"Okay, now take me to bed," she says against his lips, and she means it facetiously but it comes out sounding painfully honest. Jacob bites her collarbone and mumbles something she doesn't catch before doing as she asked. It may be the laziest sex of her life, and there's serious competition there, like, she's had sex when she was too lazy to get up but just awake enough to wrap her legs around someone, that kind of lazy. This is better, though; she's not completely exhausted, for one, and—it's not that she doesn't do anything, but Jacob spends a really long time just kissing and touching her, all over, which she loves, and he knows she loves.

It's a great cap to a good night, which is why she pretends to be asleep before she really is, even if it's tempting to call him out on being creepy when he watches her for a moment and draws a lock of hair away from her lips. He lies back quickly, though, an arm loose around her, tapping his fingertips on her stomach. She smiles, then, now she knows he can't see that, and lets out a long breath.

He's out before she wakes up in the morning, and it takes her a few minutes to remember where in the world he was supposed to go this morning that he'd have to leave long before dawn. He told her weeks ago, and didn't mention it last night, so she thinks it's fair that she doesn't remember straight away. It's not like he goes to that many meetings, let alone hold them. She can't believe she didn't realize that's what the research he did talk about last night was for.

There's a note on the fridge when she goes to get milk: _had to step out, still not as flaky as you think I am_. She folds it and sticks it in the pocket of her dress pants, feels ridiculous as she does, but she feels so comforted by it she wants to hang onto that feeling a while longer.

Court's barely a vision today; she's there with Zoe for five minutes at most, whisked in and out by a company car. The trial's supposed to end tomorrow, but most of the work they need to do today is beyond her responsibility, things Hannah's briefed on as the investigator comes in and out of the offices. She catches up on paperwork instead, has a long discussion with Zoe about how they're doing with the jury. Zoe is, if possible, more optimistic than Hannah about the case, and not for the first time Hannah wonders if Zoe snuck in a talk with the pharmaceutical's attorney while Hannah wasn't looking.

She gets home around seven, and realizes at some point through the day, she made a decision. So she packs some stuff into a travel bag—barely enough for a week, but really it's her laptop that matters, and that's already in her car—and drives to Jacob's, hoping he's not revengeful to turn her away as payback for being panicky and weird.

Of course, if he did that they may have to break up. So it's in his best interest to not be a dick.

He opens the door the second time she rings, and he's frowning already. She can see the TV on from where she's standing, some documentary on dolphins he probably switched to when he heard the doorbell. Whatever. That's not why she's here.

"Six weeks," she says, and drops her bag on the floor, steps in while he closes the door. She doesn't make it past the foyer, though, just turns around and stands there, waiting for an answer.

Jacob gives her a curious look. "What?"

"I don't think you're flaky," she explains. "I'm just realistic. I'll give you six weeks. If we haven't killed each other yet, I'll give up my apartment." And then she crosses her arms over her stomach and makes a concerted effort to stop shuffling her feet. She's wearing heels; the sound they make as they slide on the floor is super unpleasant.

He looks at her for a while. He must think she's lost it. He's probably right that she's—well, not crazy, exactly. Maybe a little unpredictable. But Liz is always complaining that she's not unpredictable enough, and there's something in the way Jacob's looking at her that makes Hannah think he likes it. Or at least finds it amusing. She's good either way.

"Well, this is unexpected," Jacob points out, but he's fighting a smile, and it becomes a losing battle the moment she walks closer to him and slides the end of her fingers down his back pockets. She looks up.

"So?"

He presses his lips together, nodding meaninglessly for a few moments, and then he meets her eyes and says, "It's a deal."


End file.
